A Tea Party was scheduled this past Sunday for Lexington Green — you know, where the shot was fired that was heard 'round the world — but it got canceled at the last minute.

Why? Apparently because big tent Tea Party Republicans are scared to death of social issues.

Brian Camenker, the president of MassResistance, was slated to serve as one of the speakers at Lexington. He has spoken at numerous Tea Party events in the Bay State. Mr. Camenker's organization is one of the leading pro-family voices in Massachusetts, and he has been the most visible opponent of the radical homosexual agenda in the bastion of liberalism.

Camenker's organization has perhaps been the leading pro-family organization in the state to expose and oppose the imposition of homosexual indoctrination in the state's public school system.

According to Camenker, a Republican leader of the Boston Tea Party (you can read Camenker's account here and the account from the Lexington Minuteman here) apparently got spooked that such a staunch pro-family speaker was going to be on the roster with precious Republican candidates, and warned the candidates that as long as such a firm opponent of the homosexual agenda was on the slate, they shouldn't get anywhere near the event.

When the organizer of the Lexington Tea Party, Jesse Segovia, wouldn't yank Camenker from the roster, Republican candidates began pulling out of the event. The ostensible reason is that, as Eric Dahlberg, a GOP candidate for state senate said, "Some consider MassResistance a hate group, I don't want to be within a mile of an event that gives someone like that a stage."

Well, the only outfit I know of that has classified MassResistance as a "hate group" is the Southern Poverty Law Center, which slaps the same "hate" label on people such as Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann. Not a lot of credibility there.

According to Camenker, the leader of the Boston Tea Party, the woman who managed to get the entire Lexington event scrapped, avoids social issues like the plague at Boston Tea Party events, in order to keep the focus exclusively on fiscal issues.

But most folks in the Tea Party movement recognize that it is far worse for a nation to be morally and spiritually bankrupt than to be fiscally bankrupt, and are in the movement, at least in part, because they are alarmed at the moral drift in this country and want to do something about it.

This strain of moral libertarianism is a threat to the Tea Party movement. If the Tea Party is to be an effective voice, it must unapologetically press an agenda of fiscal, constitutional and social conservatism. Authentic conservatism is holistic, and knocking one of the three legs off the stool will prove fatal in the end to the Tea Party effort.

Authentic conservatives are economic libertarians and cultural conservatives. Not one or the other.

Cultural libertarians are not conservatives at all. They have far more in common with the hippies of the '60s than they do with George Washington and Thomas jefferson.

The Tea Party will forfeit its claim to reflect the values of the Founders if it does not affirm the message of cultural conservatism as well as economic restraint. Let's not forget that it was the father of our country who said that religion and morality both are "indispensable supports" of political prosperity, and that no man can rightly call himself a patriot who would labor to subvert either one.

To my knowledge, this is the first Tea Party event to be canceled because a social conservative was on the platform. Let's hope it's the last.

Bryan Fischer

Bryan Fischer is the host of the daily 'Focal Point' radio talk program on AFR Talk, a division of the American Family Association. 'Focal Point' airs live from 1-3 pm Central Time, and is also simulcast on the AFA Channel, which can be seen on the Sky Angel network.